Every Batman Villain Ranked!

batman has one of the absolute best rogues galleries and when it comes to comic book movies he's had some of the absolute best villains and many of the worst as well which ones fall into each category today we're going to stop and rank all 24 theatrical live-action batman villains from the worst to the best [Music] hi my name is sean and i love to talk about movies and tv way too much with that in mind go ahead and join me down below in the comments section share your ranking of the batman theatrical live action villains my list isn't the right list it's just my list and i would love to see yours when it comes to villain rankings basically i try to do it based off the characterization how memorable they are is it a good adaptation of the character where it feels faithful to comics or they do something new and interesting or is it just a total disaster how compelling is the threat that they pose for our lead character and how interesting is the relationship with batman himself and let's get started coming in in last place is bane from batman and robin in many ways bane was the definitive batman villain in the comics in the 90s because he is the character that was able to use his brain and his brawn to break the bat therefore they decided to put him in batman and robin and utterly utterly wasted the character and made him just seem like a joke they turned him into a mindless buffoon that's just a henchman he looks absolutely ridiculous there are no redeeming qualities about this version of bane number 23 two face from batman forever tommy lee jones is a fantastic actor two face is a great character with a rich complicated backstory and in a different movie tommy lee jones could have been an amazing two-face but in joel schumacher's live-action cartoon there's just not much that tommy lee jones can bring to this specific character it feels like he's just doing his own version of jack nicholson's joker it's broad it's over the top it's loud and that's not what tommy lee jones is particularly good at and so it's just a very forgettable generic version of two-face in a movie where he's totally out shadowed or outshined by jim carrey's ridley next up poison ivy from batman and robin another example of a great actress that potentially could be a great version of poison ivy but she was stuck in this over-the-top live-action cartoon called batman and robin in which case she's just given all of these moments that are so overacted so over the top and now you corrupt my research into some maniacal scheme that they are entertaining but they're entertaining because they're so bad they loop back around and become good again she's in these scenes where she's making batman and robin fall in love with her the lead to the infamous bat credit card sequence and her plan for the world is absolutely not compatible with mr freezes but they still team up and so it just doesn't even make sense on a plot level so just another waste of a great actress in a bizarre film number 21 talia al ghul from the dark knight rises a rare miscalculation from christopher nolan where he decided to use her as a twist reveal villain in the third act of the dark knight rises in which case by the time the reveal takes place she's underdeveloped as a villain so it just served to undermine the more interesting villain of bane and never really set her up as a great threat and so then as a character she's oddly quickly briefly a love interest for bruce wayne she's kind of this forgettable character that's just kind of there throughout the run time until surprise it's roz al ghul's daughter who's the mastermind behind everything and then she dies a hilariously bad death number 20 the riddler batman forever a classic example of hollywood casting the big up-and-comer into an iconic role and instead of the actor turning into the character the character turns into the actor which means that the riddler looks a lot more like ace ventura than he does his comic book counterpart sucking up your iq vacuuming the cortex feeding off your brain it has all the frantic manic energy that jim carrey was famous for that he was so good at and so many movies from the 90s that i love it just doesn't fit the riddler it just feels like they went man he's popular let's put him in the movie and let him do his thing and it made people buy tickets for the movie but i don't think it made for a great version of the riddler and i don't like the arc that they give his character his motivation for turning into a villain i need an answer now i think i deserve it the technology stuff is way underdeveloped in the plot line in which case just a lot of stuff that just didn't work for me and i don't think has aged well number 19 mr freeze batman and robin now unlike uma thurman tommy lee jones and jim carrey i don't think that arnold schwarzenegger was miscast as this live-action cartoon version of mr freeze if you're going to do this ridiculous puntacular version of mr freeze arnold schwarzenegger is actually quite good at delivering one-liners being cheesy being corny he was the right actor to play this version of the character it's just probably not a version of the character that ever should have existed but since he was properly cast he's a lot more memorable and distinct than i think the characters down below they cherry picked the heart of ice plot line from batman the animated series and dropped it into this movie so there actually is a compelling backstory there tonally it doesn't really fit with all the puns and him dancing to christmas specials but it is an interesting compelling story that tied into the plot line so i find him to be a better villain inside of these joel schumacher live-action cartoons well obviously still not being a great villain in general next up doomsday batman v superman now granted doomsday in this film is just a big hulking monster designed to have a big boss fight at the end of the film but i think this version of the character delivers on having a big epic boss fight at the end of this film obviously doomsday is much more aligned with superman as a villain as it's the character that in the comics and in this movie killed superman but you do get batman actively involved in this fight sequence where he's dodging blast and you see just how agile this very big hulking batman can be as he's using his bat grappling gun to avoid laser blasts in shots that look like they're straight ripped out of the comics something that zack snyder is very good at doing and so doomsday is not a deep villain not an in-depth compelling villain but one that properly served this sequence in the film and fit into the plot line that was being told across the trilogy of zack snyder films then we have lex luthor from batman v superman obviously lex luthor is primarily a superman villain but in this film lex luthor is doing a series of things to push batman over the edge in order to trick batman into going to war with superman in which case he is very clearly an antagonist towards batman in this film and this is a frustrating one because there's a bunch of things about this characterization that i think are right the basic idea of what he's trying to do and try to manipulate the system on all these different fronts with this master plan where he's messing around with technology getting villains or heroes to fight against each other all of that feels like a very interesting compelling lex luthor and then they just added in all of these weird jessie eisenberg isms that just don't feel like lex luthor should be doing where he's pushing jolly ranchers into someone's mouth then he's peeing in a jar and he's making all these little high-pitched noises and stuff bruce wayne meets clark kent i love it i love bringing people together that i don't know where they were going with it i just don't think it was the right direction to go and so i don't think he's as bad as some people make him out to be but he's not nearly as good as he should be number 16 falcone from batman begins now he's certainly a third tier villain in this film but he's also pivotal to the plot line as he's integrated all throughout bruce wayne's journey where you see him as this person that is so responsible for what gotham has begun that leads to what both bruce wayne is doing as batman as well as what raz al ghul is doing with his master plan to blow up the city and with the way the movie structured essentially the first two acts of the film are all about trying to take him down and once bruce wayne assumes the batman role and takes out falcone i'm batman that's when the movie has to transition and to essentially set up another conflict with razal ghoul trying to blow up the city but he's a pivotal piece to it not a ton of complex he's just kind of gangster guy but that doesn't mean he's not interesting in the way that he relates to our lead character number 15 max shrek from batman returns another forgotten third villain from a film but he's responsible for so much of what takes place in this film he's manipulating penguin and partnering with him he's the person that pushes selena kyle out the window leading to her turn into catwoman you know second there you really frightened me and all throughout it he's manipulative and conniving he's pretty one note there's not a lot explaining his motivation but as kind of this greedy evil businessman that's just out for power at any cost christopher walken does a great job at playing that type of role and can make what might be a one note villain pop more than he probably should and this movie and this role was my introduction to christopher walken number 14 steppenwolf from zack snyder's justice league one of the characters most improved by zack snyder's justice league because he listened to the fans we complained that there weren't enough pokey things on his armor and zack snyder fixed it for his version of the film but seriously this is an example of a character who in justice league they just stripped away any nuance anything that would give us some sense of why the character was doing what he was doing in which case in that version he just kept saying mother mother mother which was kind of creepy rather than compelling and zack snyder instead made him this tragic dictator of sorts who is desperately trying to earn back the approval of darkseid by conquering worlds and discovering something for him and while we're not rooting for him we want him to lose we think he's despicable there is something about someone yearning for the approval of someone else that makes him compelling and interesting at the same time then we have the batman 66 rogues gallery and i decided to kind of clump them all together because they all have the same villain scheme they all give off the same energy and they don't have specific character arcs in the film so they function as a group together and they served the film that they were making obviously it was a different time a different type of batman it was campy it was silly and so were they all of them were high energy energetic it fit the film that they were making they could be funny they could be silly and they just all played into it whether it's catwoman is mitzkitka or penguinist commodore schmidt lap or joker just all being all out with this thing if this is your kind of thing they do it really well i grew up on the tv show i grew up watching this movie so i had a lot of fun with it not the most in depth not the most compelling but fit the film that they were making number 12 scarecrow from the dark knight trilogy now what i love about this version of the character is that he wasn't the front and center main villain in any of these films but he appeared in all three of them making it clear that gotham is this city populated by villains and if they don't get arrested they can come back and even after they get arrested they can still haunt gotham and you see that illustrated through this character of course the performance is a lot of fun he's here who the batman but not overdone and fits into this more grounded version of gotham and so not like a top tier villain but a great use of a mid-tier villain number 11 catwoman the dark knight rises now this is one of the most complicated ones for me because sometimes she's an ally sometimes she's an outright villain sometimes she's an anti-hero and then she ends the film as bruce wayne's love interest where they go off to have their happy ending and some of it's great some of it is a really nice usage of a character inside of a plot line to make them complicated and interesting you don't owe these people anymore and other stuff just seems really lazy when she's being used as someone that is desperate and thus makes some choices that both commit a crime against bruce wayne and betray batman there's some interesting details with what happens with all of that and then they give her just enough of a redemptive arc where she's not an outright villain she just did some villainous things when she was desperate did they kill her i'm not sure all of that stuff is interesting and a nice usage but the motivation behind all of it is that she's trying to get this clean slate technology that just feels like a really lazy plot gimmick and then having her set up as bruce wayne's happy ending at the end of the film doesn't feel like that was set up at all in the film especially when he's off hooking up with talia al ghul in the middle of the film seems like they were setting up different things and didn't know exactly what they're doing so my mother warned me about getting into cars with strange men this isn't a car a lot of stuff i enjoyed here some stuff that just felt lazy seems like we needed more time with her and had we had it she could have been a top tier character kicking off our 10 falcone from the batman the crime lord that's behind everything taking place inside of the batman the person who's been manipulating things behind the scenes trying to get leverage over whoever he can and just might be behind the wayne murders john tutuer just has a great screen presence so you get he gets under your skin just by trying to be charming and sweet talk people he's manipulative he's conniving you know he's not like a front and center flashy kind of villain that kind of gets you into that top tier but he's a great addition to this gotham to just make it feel like it has this rich history where everyone kind of has ties to the person that's manipulating everything and he's that guy number nine penguin batman returns this is very much a tim burtonized version of penguin that turns him into an actual penguin man and characterizes him as this isolated weirdo in certain senses just trying to be accepted by the people around him and when they don't accept him he rebels against them in a vicious hateful way danny devito is absolutely pitch perfect as this version of the character he has all sorts of memorable iconic moments there's also a bunch of stuff about it that is just a little bit too tim burtonized or a little bit too silly in particular in the part where he takes control of the batmobile and he's sitting in like a little kitty amusement car ride driving it around i just thought it was a bit too silly he's a little bit too horny there's a few mini things like that they're just a little bit off about it so i i he isn't my favorite villain in batman returns but he certainly is one that leaves a mark is memorable and feels very much like a tim burton product next up to face the dark knight and i've always felt like this is the forgotten gem in the dark knight everybody talks about heath ledger's joker heath ledge is the one that won the oscar but then that key piece in there is two-face and i think it's a shame that we didn't get more of this version of the character now i understand they needed to do what they did with two-face to set up the final monologue in the film as well it wears where they wanted to take the character leading to the dark knight rises man i wish the two-face could have survived and shown up later on as this crime boss that kind of continues the tragic fall of gotham's white knight and that is what makes the character so compelling he was gotham's white knight we saw so much of him as a good man bruce this is harvey dent rachel's told me everything about you i certainly hope not that is turn through the actions of the joker and what happens to him and so even a good man can turn into a monster and just kind of fleshes out what the joker was trying to communicate throughout the course of the film as one of the ways that he is testing batman but we'll get to more of that later on in this video number seven raz al-ghul from the dark knight trilogy now great villains pose a compelling threat while also having an interesting relationship with our hero and in the case of raz al ghul he's a person that actually spotted the talent in bruce wayne recruited him to his cause trained him to be batman if you make yourself more than just a man then you become something else entirely a legend and then became the villain in the story though he was actually always the villain bruce wayne in the audience just didn't know it at the time in which case it creates a scenario where he was a friend and mentor to our hero so when they clash in the end it's all the more interesting because there's such a personal dynamic to it each of them are passionate about gotham both of them agree gotham is deeply broken one of them believes it can still be saved and should be saved and the other one believes it must be burned to the ground and that makes for a compelling conflict the specific plot line about the technology and blowing it up feels a little bit tacked on to the end of the film because we spent so much on the origin story and that might hold it back but i love the concept of what they were doing here with the league of shadows and everything like that then we have the riddler from the batman now this is very clearly a reimagining of the riddler in the vein of the zodiac killer as well as john doe from seven and i think it served this movie really well he's not someone that poses a physical threat to the police or to batman but he is a brilliant mastermind that can function as the serial killer who has an agenda against the city and is delusional enough to think that batman is on his side and his muscle this is about a king and rhythm's the match in trying to pull down the final piece in his master plan he's insane he's crazy but he's also brilliant and that creates this very unhinged character that is very competent in certain things while seeing the world through a absolutely bizarre lens now there is a prequel book to the batman called before the batman that gives you some glimpses into his teenage years as well as the start of his mission in gotham and i would recommend checking it out i'm assuming you've already seen the batman and i think it does kind of flesh out some details about his character and how he became the crazy person that he is in the film in fifth place bane from the dark knight rises here we get a christopher nolanized version of bane that's filled with all sorts of strange quirky nuances in particular the accent that tom hardy went with what are you i'm gotham's reckoning and i think he almost is a fantastic batman villain that sabotaged by a last minute plot twist involving talia al ghul up to that point in time he's a character that is physically imposing that can defeat bruce wayne in a fight and despite the fact that tom hardy's only about five foot nine and isn't actually this big imposing guy through movie magic on screen he looks massive he looks the part beyond that he is a mastermind that is manipulating all these pieces all along the way to move bruce wayne and batman to exactly where he wants them to be and he's a character with driven by an ideology why didn't you just kill me your punishment must be more severe so he's smart he's physical and there's something driving all of his actions unfortunately they undercut him at the last minute by making him just kind of a henchman to talia al ghul that doesn't serve him or the movie very well because she is not an improvement over him or more compelling in which case that was a bit of a misstep there but up until that point time i think he's a great batman villain in fourth place the penguin from the batman now in this film he's only a side character but i thought he absolutely stole every scene that he was in colin farrell absolutely knocked this role out of the park at face value if you were fan casting you would never in a million years pick colin farrell to play the penguin i got you but there was something that matt reeves saw him on in his audition or however that played out where they came up with this distinct great version of the character that clearly has ambitions clearly has a view on how gangsters should function in this world in every scene that he was in he just stole it he was funny he was charming he was outrageous he was villainous he fit it so well and so while he's just a side character in the film oh take it easy sweetheart i thought he was the standout he was the one that i was talking about with my friends driving home from seeing the movie and one of my buddies who knows movies really well was like who's that guy that they got to play the penguin i've never seen him in anything before he did a great job i was like that's calling through it's like that was colin farrell they need to win a bunch of oscars for what they did to transform colin farrell into this version of the penguin real quick before i give you my top three remember to join me down below in the comment section share your ranking of the batman theatrical live action villains remember my list isn't the right list it's just my list and i would love to see yours also it's tricky making a list like this because batman showed up in the suicide squad and then there's animated films and there's all these side characters that show up my list of characters could be very different you can throw more in if you want to i did the list that seemed right for me also i'm working on a bunch of these batman rankings you can check them out right up here the movies the actors i'll do the final battles a bunch of awesome other stuff and i reviewed each of the batman films leading up to the release of the batman you can also check that out right up here if you enjoy my batman content in third place is the joker from batman 89 and to me this is just a classic rendition of the comic version of the joker we get the origin story about him falling into chemicals and from there he just turns into this wild zany over the top psychopath trying to gain power in gotham killing anyone that gets in his way and just being gleeful and silly while doing all of it he's got joy buzzers he's got gas that makes people laugh themselves to death he has guns with her pistols with unbelievably long barrels that little flags shoot out the end of it he has chattering teeth it's all the classic silly joker stuff that you can only do one time and to do it that one time they got world-class oscar-winning actor jack nicholson that gives his it is all inside of this film he ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight what he absolutely steals the movie from batman who's kind of put on the back burner to spend all of our time on the origin of jack naper turning into the joker and watching all of his wild wacky and zany antics and so this is the joker i grew up with he's the one that set the standard and i think it was an amazingly high bar to set our runner-up catwoman from batman returns now once again this is very much a tim burtonized version of catwoman but boy is this a compelling version of the character where they establish this wildly insecure and lonely selena kyle that while she happens to look like michelle pfeiffer is so awkward and uncomfortable around other people that she just doesn't know how to function and through the tragedy of being killed and brought back to life by cats finds this disturbing confidence as catwoman and is reborn as this tragic villain that she didn't set out to be a crazy person out for revenge that's what life turned her into and in finding the confidence she doesn't didn't have before turns into something she never wanted to be all along the way there's that strange attraction to batman the back and forth there's also the parallel romance going on with bruce wayne with the two different kind of levels going on that just once again that relationship with the hero is so important where when you get to the end of the film there's that opportunity for her to choose to not be the villain out for vengeance and she chooses that uh instead and fault gives into the tragedy of it michelle pfeiffer gives this role her absolutely everything that she has you believe her as this gorgeous but insecure woman you it's gut wrenching when she absolutely snaps and she trained for months so she'd be able to crack a whip properly on screen anthony the longest he was a great teacher and michelle's three months of training really paid off she performed this difficult and potentially dangerous scene perfectly on the very first take this is one of the great on-screen villains but coming in in first place the joker from the dark knight a performance that was so good that it won a post-humorous oscar for heath ledger as we've said all along a great villain has to pose a threat and have a compelling interesting relationship to our hero and in the case of this joker he ties back to our hero thematically we ended batman begins with this idea of escalation that if batman shows up as this theatrical hero that will lead to theatrical villains i stick a razor in my mouth and do this to myself and all the order that batman's trying to bring leads to this counterbalance in the joker who's an agent of chaos i'm an agent of chaos who has all these master plans but the purpose of them is to burn everything to the ground and while he has all these plans that are putting lives in in danger also central to his plan is to teach batman a lesson that people aren't as good as he thinks they are they will make bad choices and while when it came to the test with the prisoners and the bombs the good guys won but when it came to two-face the other test that the joker put out there the villains one in which case that led to the scenario where batman had to be the dark knight and be perceived of as the villain at the end of this film and that's what makes for a great villain one that tests our hero on every single level they're memorable why so serious they're compelling but they test our hero on all of these levels you're not expecting you expect batman to have to save the day and stop thugs but that intellectual that ideological threat that's what elevates this villain above the rest because he stood for so much more and challenged christian bale's batman on so many extra levels so he comes in and number one remember if you enjoyed this video i've got a ton of other batman content you can check out my batman reviews right over there if you want in-depth looks at each of the films if you enjoy rankings like this one i got more of them right down there thank you so much for watching and keep talking movies too much

Channel: Sean Chandler Talks About

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Keywords: batman villains, batman, joker, bane, the batman, batman villains ranked with riddler, dc comics, catwoman, riddler, batman villains ranked from worst to best, all batman villains ranked, every batman villain ranked, the batman villains ranked, christopher nolan, batman movies ranked, batman ranked, sean chandler, sean chandler talks about, batman begins, the dark knight, best batman villain, every batman movie ranked, batman returns, batman forever, batman v superman

Id: IwQruMs7nAQ

Length: 30min 44sec (1844 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 10 2022